Visual modes

Keys	Description
`v`	Enter visual mode - highlight multiple characters from left to right `h`,`l`
`shift` + `v`	Enter Visual (capital V) mode - highlight multiple lines up and down with `j`,`k`
`ctrl` + `v`	Enter VisualBlock mode - highlight a visual block of character and lines in all directions with `j`,`k`,`l`,`h`

Once you’ve highlighted a selection, you can then operate on just that selection, so you can cut it, copy it, indent it, and use interactive sed on it. You can also search for a selection. It’s pretty helpful.

Searching for a selection

Thank you to the people on stackoverflow for this one:

Select the text using a visual selection, e.g. v
Yank it (this is copying), y
Search, /
Paste the last yanked text using 0 (Ctrl while holding r and then pressing 0) Actually inserts the content from register 0, see :h i_ctrl-r

Another example is using the command line:

Select the text using a visual selection, e.g. v
Yank it, y
Enter command-line mode with editing an Ex command, q/
Paste yanked text, p, and search by pressing Enter

In short: yq/p<Enter>

searching selection: shorter short cut

My personal .vimrc includes these lines, so that I can just highlight a selection and then immediately search it with *:

xnoremap * :<C-u>call <SID>VSetSearch()<CR>/<C-R>=@/<CR><CR>
xnoremap # :<C-u>call <SID>VSetSearch()<CR>?<C-R>=@/<CR><CR>

function! s:VSetSearch()
    let temp = @s
    norm! gv"sy
    let @/ = '\V' . substitute(escape(@s, '/\'), '\n', '\\n','g')
    let @s = temp
endfunction

Insert into all selected visualblock lines

After you have a visual block selected:

shift + i takes you into insert for all lines, and you can type whatever you want, including indentation like spaces or tabs.

NOTE: It will only look like you’re editing one line, and that is ok!

Hit esc twice!

Interactive sed example

This will prepend “meep “ only on the current line your cursor is on:

:s/^/meep /

Adding % will prepend every line in the file with “meep “:

:%s/^/meep /